‘I nearly died after flying thousands of miles to install a power cord for the NSA’
- Reference: 1752823751
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2025/07/18/on_call/
- Source link:
This week, meet a reader we'll Regomize as "Kent" who told us about a job he held in the 1980s, when he worked for a manufacturer of some of the first digital waveform recorders and logic analyzers – vintage kit for diagnosing problems in electronic devices.
"I was hired as a repair tech and eventually ended up running the department," Kent told On Call.
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That lofty position meant that when a very important client – the USA's National Security Agency (NSA) – reported a logic analyzer was producing junk data, Kent got the job of sorting it out.
[2]
[3]
"Shipping the device for a factory repair would have been prohibitively expensive, so I had to travel to the site along with the software developer who was responsible for that model's firmware," he told On Call.
That meant flying from California to Washington DC, then hiring a car to reach the NSA's Maryland headquarters.
[4]
"The software guy insisted on driving and got lost getting to the right gatehouse," Kent told On Call. "He eventually came to a blind intersection with a huge berm and a large 'Yield' sign. He had no intention of slowing; I begged him to be careful but he went ahead at full speed."
The resulting side-on crash with two incoming vehicles sent the car containing Kent and his software guy rolling and flipping before landing upside down in a ditch.
Miraculously, both crawled away unharmed, but the drivers of the cars they hit weren't so lucky.
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"I quit my job on the spot out of anger and went to the hotel to have a stiff drink and a hot bath," Kent said, before his boss called and talked him into staying.
[6]Security company hired a used car salesman to build a website, and it didn't end well
[7]'Trained monkey' from tech support saved know-it-all manager's mistake with a single keypress
[8]Don't shoot me, I'm only the system administrator!
[9]Techie traveled 4 hours to fix software that worked perfectly until a new hire used it
Once Kent got to the customer site, he experienced the kind of paranoid security for which the NSA is infamous.
"We had to put up with getting weighed and our gear searched before entering the building," he told On Call. "Inside, every single door was shut and locked and we were of course escorted. At the proper door, we went in to discover our 'misbehaving' machine in a break area with cables going through the wall connected to a top secret target."
This was less than ideal, because it meant Kent – a hardware expert – could not see or touch the device he was there to fix.
He therefore watched as his software guy spent hours debugging, without producing any useful insights.
Kent eventually ran out of patience, told the software guy the machine ran fully validated production code, so it was time to inspect the hardware.
"Like any good tech, the first thing I did was power down to do a basic check on all possible connections," Kent said. "I immediately discovered that the power cord was missing the ground prong for some reason."
He supplied a cord with that prong, and the machine started working again.
"The geniuses at the NSA were happy that their machine was working properly and I finally got to go home."
"The best part was that on the way home I had a huge jet almost to myself for the long flight," he told On Call.
And he was alive, too!
Have you seen your life flash before your eyes on the way to a tech support job? If so, [10]click here to send On Call an email so we can share your story. ®
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[6] https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/11/on_call/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/04/on_call/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/27/on_call/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/20/on_call/
[10] mailto:oncall@theregister.com
[11] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Keeping his feet on the Earth.
"power cord was missing the ground prong"
The NSA spooks having performed a prophylactic prongectomy being worried about potential earth leakage ?
"told the software guy the machine ran fully validated production code"
Then why was the software guy there in the first place ?
Re: "told the software guy the machine ran fully validated production code"
To see if five eyes had changed it
Re: "told the software guy the machine ran fully validated production code"
To drive the car.
Badly.
A berm?
"... intersection with a huge berm..."
[1]https://youtube.com/watch?v=GLDvtpSC_98
[1] https://youtube.com/watch?v=GLDvtpSC_98
Awkward secret customers
I once had a 02:00 call from someone who announced themselves as "Admiral Pacific Fleet" and I caught "costing us a million dollars a day" before I removed the shouting from my ear, until I detected silence (about 45 seconds). I then calmly asked what the symptoms were and was bluntly told "No, someone else will call you!" Less than a minute after he put down the receiver, someone who was much calmer called me, but the answer was still "no we cannot tell you!" OK, so I went back to bed.
This underling had given me an email address (which I recognised) to use to contact them. Over the course of the next day I sent a number of scenarios to this email address each asking if this might show a similar problem. To which I almost immediately received a single word response "NO". Eventually, I received a "YES" about 24 hours after first contact. OK, so I went to bed to cogitate over the issue.
I worked out what was wrong with their configuration of the device (and connected devices) quite quickly, emailed them, but never got a reply. The email asking for a "customer survey" response (sent the next day) bounced!
One place I worked the Company Chairman had a notoriously way with interviews. He insisted on picking up one poor applicant from the station and driving him the 3 miles or so to the office. At the end of the lane he overcooked the corner and ended up in a ditch. He just leapt from the car, grabbed his briefcase and shouted, "we can walk from here". When he got to the office, he handed the keys to the receptionist, and said "My car's in a ditch. Get someone to tow it out please" and proceeded with the interview.....
Why would the applicant take even one more step alongside this idiot towards an interview?
Personally, I'd rather work for a company with a chairman who might occasionally crash their car with me in it than one that makes me sit through a 'mindfulness' seminar every other month just because someone else had a breakdown. Ironically the aforementioned seminars felt like they were bringing me closer to a breakdown.
> He supplied a cord with that prong, and the machine started working again.
Looks like Kent became Superman